You know what I mean, don’t you?
Mothers tell their kids lots of things, but there are those particular things that lodge in a young mind and fester, sometimes for years. Things that kids don’t quite have the courage to question.
Here’s the one I remember best from my childhood:
‘If you go to bed wearing socks, you’ll wake up with a bed full of rubbish’
This one was said to me in tones of such dire foreboding that I very quickly took off the socks I was planning to wear in bed, and pulled the covers over my head to check that it hadn’t already happened. Of course, I was only about six at the time, or I might have … I dunno … put them back on later and risked it, maybe. But I was quite a timid child who always did as she was told (… and never let her soup get cold*)
Anyway, this admonition really played on my mind. I can remember having vivid nightmares about waking up in a bed full of chocolate wrappers, soggy tea-leaves and assorted bits of junk. Why this should have been so terrifying I have no idea, but it was. It was right up there with the skeleton dancing outside my window in the dead of night, and the very scary Ball of Wool dream. Right bang alongside the dream where I was trying to cross a busy road by myself and the cars all had huge eyes for headlights and lunged at me as they zoomed past.
As I grew older, I tried to reason with myself about this Thing. I told myself that Mum had just been kidding me and there was absolutely no substance in the rumour at all, and finally I put it out of my mind. Then, many years later, I had an ‘Aha!’ moment when I was collecting the laundry.  And I understood exactly what she meant.
One of my young sons had in fact gone to bed in his socks. Not once, but several times. And guess what?
His bed was full of rubbish!!
But, no. Not chocolate wrappers and soggy tea-bags. No lolly sticks or half-eaten sandwiches or scraps of used paper. Just hundreds of tiny little woolly dust-bunnies, rubbed off his socks against the sheets.
Goes to show, doesn’t it? You can’t be too careful what you tell your kids, because some of it might stick!
And there’s a damn good chance they STILL won’t get it right!
*Brownie points for anyone who can tell me where that comes from
What a relief, for a moment I thought you had found teabags chips and chocolate wrappers in his bed! Mine doesn’t wear sox but there are dubious items beside his bed!(I rarely go there) I know the quote but won’t give it away seeing as I’m the first!
Hmmm…interesting…I’ve worn socks to bed before and my sheets always appear to be just fine!
…”Rubbish” is a funny word.
Angis last blog post..Happy 233rd Birthday, USMC.
I wear socks to bed all the time because I have a tendency to have cold feet. Hubby sticks his feet out into the air. We sleep with a very strange arrangement of covers. No rubbish that I’ve noticed though.
Ruth Hull Chatliens last blog post..Sunday link
Baino - Dubious items! I won’t ask! LOL!
Angi - Rubbish is what we in England call ‘trash’ - we think that’s a funny word!
Angi and Ruth - I think the problem was that before we had central heating, we had flannelette sheets, which were kind of soft and fluffy textured. Put that together with the old fashioned type of woollen socks and the friction between them would rub off bobbles of fluff.
The son who wore his socks to bed also liked flannelette sheets. I doubt it would happen with smooth cotton - or with the more modern mixed fabric socks.
Ruth - As you get older I think you do need different sleeping arrangements. We have separate mattresses and separate duvets, and I now find it difficult to sleep without that, even in a king-sized bed. It’s the other way round for us - I am warm, OH gets cold - but I also can’t sleep with the mattress bouncing around as he turns over.
It just goes to show that we should choose our words wisely when talking to children! Woolly socks and flannelette sheets would not mix well and would definitely cause a mess, but I don’t think it would include soggy tea-leaves :O)
LOL - true, I suppose any word other than “rubbish” might sound funny to you…Although I don’t tend to say “trash” as much as I say “garbage”, e.g. “I have to take the garbage out, the garbage can is overflowing.”
And you’re right, I could see how flannel (flannelette??? That’s a new one too!) sheets would end up with little fuzzy balls all over them!
Angis last blog post..Happy 233rd Birthday, USMC.
hmm….Must be an English thing, as I have never heard of those sayings.
Mr. Nighttimes last blog post..I’m embarrassed just remembering this.
I Googled “always did as she was told and never let her soup get cold” and I can tell you exactly where it comes from.
It comes from http://www.thedeppeffect.com and Google never lies.
rhymeswithplagues last blog post..Tuesday ramblings
Babs - Hopefully not! But you know what kids’ minds are like. So literal! And tea leaves … that was one of the messiest kind of rubbish, I suppose, and one I least wanted in my bed!
Angi - Oh yes - garbage is another! We do use that word, but more often in an abstract way, as in ‘that’s just a load of old garbage’ in response to an argument.
And yes, I’ve noticed that the fabric you call ‘flannel’ in the US is the same as our ‘flannelette’. I think we call it that to differentiate between that and the thicker ‘flannel’ which our grannies knew.
Mr N - That was one my mother made up, I’m sure of it. I think she just didn’t want the bother of getting the fluff off the sheets.
Bob - ROFL!! That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard for a long time!!
Oh how funny!
I never wear socks to bed, I have to sleep with my feet outside of the covers too, otherwise I overheat!
meleah rebeccahs last blog post..A Book? So…You Want To Write A Book?
I was always told things like, ‘don’t sit on cold paving stones, you’ll get piles’. and ‘never sit with you back to a fire, it will make you sick’
Mums talk bollocks, and sadly, I know, that if I ever get to be a father, I’ll do the same , I already use “sorry, I can’t play with you, I have a bone in my leg…”, the kids buyb that everytime, or they think Uncle Moon is weird ?!?!?!
moons last blog post..Moon’s and Mrs M’s Monday Montage
I’ll risk the dust bunnies for warm feet. But yes, it’s funny how mom phrases like that can stick with you forever.
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Wasn’t allowed out after a bath in case I caught cold and NEVER allowed to leave my vest or liberty bodice off until well into June!
“never let her soup get cold” - sounds like it could be A A Milne or Edward Lear.
A x
It also sounds a bit like it could be from W. H. Auden’s childhood stab at poetry, “To the Unknown Juvenile Citizen”….
rhymeswithplagues last blog post..Tuesday ramblings
Meleah - I don’t get cold feet, either. It has to be well below freezing before I wear my sheepskin boots! And I hardly ever wear gloves.
Moon - Yep, both those first two are familiar to me too! And it’s so funny - my Dad used to say the same thing as an excuse: ‘I’ve got a bone in me leg’. I’d completely forgotten that until you mentioned it!
Jenn - Funny thing - OH gets terribly cold feet but he says putting extra clothes on doesn’t help. He’s never, ever worn bedsocks.
Strawberry Jam Anne - Same here with the bath!
But no. Not Edward Lear, though it does sound like it!
Bob - I shall have to look that one up. I don’t know it.
But no, not that either. It’s from an English translation of Heinrich Hoffman’s Strewwelpeter - admonitory tales for children!
-
Jay, I was trying to be funny — there’s no such poem. But read his “The Unknown Citizen” and then try to imagine what a version about a juvenile might have been like.
rhymeswithplagues last blog post..Tuesday ramblings
Hi Jay - found “never let HIS soup get cold” -
“Story of Augustus who would not have any soup” by Heinrich Hoffman
A x
Bob - And there was I telling OH yesterday what a good, dry sense of humour you had! It was too dry for me there, wasn’t it? I missed it! Oops! LOL!
Strawberry Jam Anne - Yep, that’s the one! I paraphrased it!
I often put socks on when I get into bed in the winter time, but I don’t wear woolly ones and don’t end up with rubbish in my bed. Of course, the sheets all get changed every Saturday, so even if there were woolly bunnies in the bed….
There were so many things my mother said that stuck with me forever. It took years of dissecting those things to make sense of them. I’m glad you figured yours out!
Peace - D
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